Phish Phinds the iPod "Irreplaceable"
October 08, 2003 - PowerPage
By Jason D. O'Grady
I got to interview Brad Sands, Phish's Road Manager, while waiting for a
flight from Newark to Toronto. Sands is a PowerBook and iPod user and talked with
me for a little while about the huge impact that the iPod has had on the band.
Q. Tell me about your selection of Miami, FL for the band's upcoming winter
tour dates?
A. We took a fresh look at it... New York's Madison Square Garden will always
be a favorite place for the band to play on New Year's Eve. Phish hasn't
played Florida for such a big show since their millennium festival at the Big
Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation in 1999. Page McConnell's band, Vida Blue,
played there recently and it was a great experience.
Q. What about the American Airlines Arena?
A. It's located on Biscayne Bay and there are all these open plazas in the
venue. And it's just over the bridge from South Beach.
According to Sands the show to see on Phish's upcoming Winter tour, in
addition to New Year's in Miami, is the bands 20th Anniversary performance at
Boston's Fleet Center on December 2. Online ticket "requests" closed about three
weeks ago but you can get tickets via telephone beginning 17 October.
Sand's also tells me that this will be the band's fourth time to Philly this
year...
Q. So do you get Cheesesteaks while you are in Philly?
A. Yeah, we usually send a runner to pick up Cheesesteaks for the band and
crew (laughs).
Q. More importantly, where do you get them from? (laughs) (The best
Cheesesteak joint is a fiercely debated topic here in the City of Brotherly Love).
A. We usually get Pat's or Jim's but there a few guys that like Geno's...
Q. What about you? What's your fave?
A. I would have to go with Pat's.
Q. So how did you start using the iPod?
A. The band hadn't played in two years (before coming out of a hiatus to play
NYE at the Garden in 2002) and I discussed it with Phish archivist Jason
Colton. I thought that it would be cool to get an iPod and load all of the band's
originals live, cover songs and original artists. That way they could just say
"We should play this tune..." and pull it up on the iPod. Before the iPod, we
would have to dig through piles of CDs during rehearsal to find songs. CDs
never really worked for us. No more looking for CDs, no losing CDs. The iPod
galvanized the band.
Trey will sometimes sit in his hotel room looking for obscure songs forgotten
on his iPod. He likes being able to run through some songs really quickly.
There's no way they would have played songs like "Destiny Unbound" at Nassau
Colleseum - or "Soul Shakedown Party." They forgot that they had played some of
those songs!
Each band member also picked five albums they loved and we put them on
everyone's iPod. Mike picked Gillian Welch and Trey included Bob Dylan's Basement
Tapes.
Q. So it sounds like the iPod has become an integral part of how Phish works
with music.
A. The iPod is an irreplaceable tool for Phish. We'll set up an iPod in the
practice room connected to a pair of external speakers. Its nice to have the
band's entire song catalog available in alphabetical order. That way they can
have instant access to any song and quickly listen to it. Every member of the
band uses their iPod a little differently. Page uses his with a pair of Bose
quiet comfort headphones. Fishman has some nice earbuds too. The band doesn't use
ear monitors while performing on stage though, they can't feel the vibe when
using them.
Q. Tell me a little bit more about the band's use of iPods.
A. The band members have a mix of 10 and 30GB iPods. Fishman has lots of
different songs on his iPod (and even lost one) whereas Trey has mostly Phish
stuff on his. Page is somewhere in the middle. They've all embraced them, it's a
tribute to how perfect it is. Most bands play the same set each night, not us.
We have about 300 songs of the Phish catalog in a playlist which is about
3.5GB, then we have some of the (band members) side projects like Vida Blue and
Oysterhead on there too but we pretty much keep it to one version of each song.
We don't necessarily need the most rippin' version of "Bathtub Gin" on the
iPod, sometimes you just want to re-learn the chords.
We also have our covers on the iPods as well as the original artist versions.
For instance we added Led Zeppelin's "Good Times, Bad Times" and Little
Feat's "Time Loves a Hero." (Phish played "Time Loves a Hero" at their epic NYE
reunion show at MSG on 12/31/02).
Q. So who handles the all the music that gets onto the iPods?
A. That's all done by the archivists: Kevin Shap, Rob O'Dea and Kevin Monty.
PowerBook guys (laughs)...
Q. I know that you're a PowerBook user Brad, are there any other PowerBooks
on tour?
A. Mike (Gordon) has a PowerBook G4 Titanium from around 2001 that he brings
on the road with him. He does all sorts of video work and uses ProTools. He
has a pretty elaborate Mac setup at home too. At The Barn (the band's practice
facility and studio in Vermont) we use ProTools on a bunch of PowerMac G4s
connected to three large Apple Cinema Displays, Glyph hard drives. Everything is
backed up to tape and hard drive.
Q. What about Phish's history of playing cover songs? And that crazy July 29
show in Burgettstown, PA? (just outside of Pittsburgh)
A. It was kind of a long bus ride that day and they decided to play some old
songs just to keep them fresh. The whole first set was retro tunes. Whether
it's Pittsburgh, Deer Creek or Philly the band likes to play covers but at
Pittsburgh it just took on its own thing. The cool thing about it is that because
of the iPod they played them well. It's nice to dust off some of the oldies and
be able to play old tunes.
Q. What is your favorite Apple technology in use at Phish?
A. I would have to say AirPort. We have wireless access in our production
offices. The Web is great for those times when you need lyrics to a tune. It was
my job to figure out the lyrics to songs Phish would cover. We would send a
runner out for a CD and hope there were lyrics in the insert. If there wasn't, I
would listen to it over and over and attempt to transcribe the lyrics as best
as I could. I remember trying to figure out the first line of (Van Halen's)
"Running With The Devil." Now we can easily look up lyrics on the Web.
Q. What about other interesting uses of Macs at Phish?
A. Well did you see the NY Times article on the (IT) festival? We set up a
100,000-watt FM radio station at the site and had a bunch of iMacs set up so
that fans could burn their own custom Phish CDs using iTunes. All for free.
LivePhish.com has been a real big success allowing us to sell live Phish
shows directly to fans immediately after the show. We typically have a big section
of tapers at all of the old shows, but now it's almost like there's no need
for taping. Why go through all that trouble when you can download a digital
soundboard recording of a show for $9.95 the day after it was performed live?
The LivePhish.com team puts in a lot of effort into making the experience a
good one and they offer things like cover graphics, inserts and liners for all
of our live shows. They want to make it as much like a real CD as posssible.
Q. So you're a PowerBook guy, what do you find your PowerBook most useful for
in the day-to-day operations as Phish's road manager?
A. The main thing is the fact that I can be on AirPort and access my email.
Email is huge, especially when the band is on tour. I spend a lot of my time
working on the guest list and ticketing. Having access to email wirelessly with
my PowerBook is a huge time saver over the massive amount of phone calls I
would have to take on the night of a show. There are always problems with tickets
and the guest list (laughs). Wireless email allows me to be in constant
contact - although there are still a ton of phone calls :)
Article Copyright © 2003 PowerPage
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